Pre-Conference: June 23rd-24th Conference: June 25th-27th

Members of the International Scientific Program Committee (ISPC):

Co-Chair:

Professor Guy Maddern: MBBS, PhD, MS, MD, FRACS, Head, Discipline of Surgery, University of Adelaide; Interim Head, School of Medicine, University of Adelaide; Director, Division of Surgery, The Queen Elizabeth Hospital; Director, Basil Hetzel Institute, The Queen Elizabeth Hospital; Surgical Director, Australian Safety and Efficacy Register of New Interventional Procedures - Surgical (ASERNIP-S); Surgical Director, Country Health SA, and past president of INAHTA.

Co-Chair:

Laura Sampietro-Colom: Laura is a doctor of medicine and surgery (University of Barcelona) and a specialist in Public Health, and holds a Master of Science in Public Health (Emory University, Atlanta, USA). She has over 18 years of experience in evaluative research, particularly in HTA. She was one of the founders of the Catalan Agency for Health Technology Assessment, and is currently a research associate. She was a member of the past Board of Directors of ISTAHC and has been a Director of the International Society for Health Technology Assessment (HTAi) Board, including three years as the Secretary of the Executive Committee. She is currently the past President of HTAi.

Members:

Dr Adam Elshaug is a health service and policy researcher with expertise in the area of identifying and critically reviewing the use of low-value health care services. With a strong multi-disciplinary background in psychology, sociology, physiology, clinical epidemiology and health policy, Dr Elshaug has made a commitment to collaborate and consult closely with federal and provincial government health agencies and other third-party payers in Australia and internationally (Spain, Canada, USA) to advance real-world policy reform in this area. Elshaug is currently working to design and implement a formal low-value policy agenda within Australian Medicare. Dr Elshaug also has experience evaluating major submissions by pharmaceutical manufacturers and industry sponsors seeking eligibility for public subsidy via Australia's Pharmaceutical Benefits Advisory Committee (PBAC) and Medical Services Advisory Committee (MSAC) processes. In 2009 Dr Elshaug was awarded the highly prestigious Harkness Fellowship (The Commonwealth Fund, USA) and Sidney Sax Public Health Fellowship (National Health and Medical Research Council of Australia). These - respectively - will occur from 2010-2013 at the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ, USA) and Harvard Medical School (Boston, USA).

Karen Facey is an independent evidence based health policy consultant and has been a Non-Executive Director of NHS Forth Valley for 7 years, where she has chaired Clackmannanshire Community Health Partnership. She is an Honorary Member of the Faculty of Public Health, a Chartered Statistician, Honorary Senior Research Fellow at the University of Glasgow and Fellow of the Royal Society of Medicine. Karen has developed a broad interest in evidence informed decision making in health and health care. Since 2003, she has been working internationally in the field of health research and health policy, particularly in relation to robust elicitation of patient and public perspectives. Karen is also the public health member on the UK regulatory Committee for the Safety of Devices and sits on their education committee. She is a member of the ISG on patient involvement in HTA.

Christa Harstall , BSc MLS, MHSA. Director of Health Technology Assessment, Alberta. Christa Harstall has had an interest in the field of health technology assessment (HTA) since 1988, when she led this initiative at the Alberta Ministry of Health. In her current role, she is responsible for the management and administration of the Provincial HTA Program and of the Alberta Ambassador Program, a knowledge translation strategy. Her involvement in health technology assessment includes membership on various national and international committees. She is the Chair of the ISG on Ethics and HTA.

Chris Henshall is the Chair of the HTAi Policy Forum for the period 2010 - 2013. Dr. Henshall held the position of Pro-Vice-Chancellor for External Relations at the University of York from January 2005 to April 2010. Prior to this, he had been Director of the Science and Engineering Base Group in the Office of Science and Technology in the Department of Trade and Industry in London, where he was responsible for around £3b (US $5b) per annum of government support for research and innovation. Before joining the Department of Trade and Industry, Dr. Henshall served as Deputy Director of Research and Development of the Department of Health. During his tenure there, he was closely involved in establishing the NHS HTA Program, the National Institute for Clinical Excellence, and, with colleagues in other countries, INAHTA. Over the years, he has also been involved in various initiatives to promote and co-ordinate HTA across Europe. Dr. Henshall was HTAi's founding President as well as the first Chair of the Policy Forum (2005 - 2007).

Marco Marchetti MD is Director of the Health Technology Assessment (HTA) Unit at the Policlinico Universitario Agostino Gemelli and of the International Master Program in HTA and Management (http://www.ulyssesprogram.net/). His expertise lies in hospital management, quality assurance, risk management and HTA. He was Deputy to the Medical Director at the \"Agostino Gemelli\" University Hospital. In addition, he is an external reviewer of the National Coordinating Centre for Health Technology Assessment (NCCHTA). Dr Marchetti conducts research and training nationally and internationally in the areas of HTA and quality of services research. He is co-chair of the ISG on HTA in Hospitals.

Joseph L. Mathew is a Pediatric Pulmonologist based at the Advanced Pediatrics Centre in Chandigarh, India and has considerable expertise in vaccination and vaccine preventable diseases of public health importance. Over the past few years, he has been actively involved in the Evidence Based Medicine (EBM) movement, with particular reference to its process and practice in developing countries. In this context, he has contributed significantly to the Cochrane Collaboration and the establishment of the South Asian Cochrane Network (Centre) in India. He has been keenly associated with EBM teaching programs in India and abroad. He is a firm supporter of Health Technology Assessment (HTA) to optimize health care resources in developing countries. He has contributed significantly to many international HTA meetings and was designated as Chair, ‘HTAi Interest Sub-Group on HTA in Developing Countries’ at the HTAi 2008 Annual Meeting in Montreal. Since then, he has been working with a group of enthusiastic people across the world to initiate and sustain HTA activities in developing countries.

Rosa Rico , MSc, Head of the Basque Office for Health Technology Assessment – Osteba, Dept. of Health and Consumer Affairs, Basque Government. Member of the G-I-N Board of Trustees from 2009/2010 to 2010/2011. Her experience in conducting systematic reviews and other management tools of Evidence-Based Medicine has led her practice towards the development of clinical practice guidelines (CPG). She joined as a member of the International Collaboration for developing the AGREE Instrument. She planned and led the Diffusion project of the AGREE Instrument far and wide of the Spanish National Health System. She was also a founding member of G-I-N.

Sean Tunis , MD, MSc. is the Founder and Director of the Center for Medical Technology Policy in Baltimore, Maryland. CMTP’s main objective is to improve the quality and relevance of clinical research by providing a neutral forum for collaboration among experts, stakeholders and decision makers. Dr. Tunis was a member of the Institute of Medicine Committee on Initial National Priorities for Comparative Effectiveness Research. He advises a wide range of domestic and international public and private health care organizations on issues of comparative effectiveness, evidence based medicine, clinical research, reimbursement and health technology policy.

Catherine Voutier , BSocSci (LibInfoServ) MIM, AALIA, Board Member of ACLI. Catherine is the Clinical Librarian at the Royal Melbourne Hospital, Melbourne Health, Australia. Her role includes facilitating EBM teaching, consumer health literacy outreach, literature/evidence searching, and web management. She is currently looking at providing a rapid review service for Melbourne Health. She is the chair of the Information Resources ISG group and is responsible for the full program on this area in the Society.

Kalipso Chalkidou, MD, PhD, is the founding director of NICE’s international programme, advising governments overseas on building technical and institutional capacity for using evidence and values to inform health policy. She is interested in how local information, local expertise and local institutions can drive scientific and legitimate healthcare resource allocation decisions. She is involved in the Chinese rural health reforms, with a focus on building HTA capacity, and also in national health reform projects in Central Asia, Turkey, the Middle East and Latin America. She co-chairs the HTAi Coverage with Evidence Development SIG.

She holds a doctorate on the molecular biology of prostate cancer from the University of Newcastle (UK), an MD (Hons) from the University of Athens and is an honorary lecturer at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (UK), a senior advisor on international policy at the Center for Medical Technology Policy (USA) and visiting faculty at the Berman Institute for Bioethics, Johns Hopkins (USA). Between 2007 and 2008 she spent a year in the USA, studying conditional coverage decisions for medical technologies and government pricing strategies for pharmaceuticals.

Organizers:

Platinum Sponsors:

Gold Sponsors:

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                  Enterprises:

Other Sponsors:

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Exhibitors: